


The Machine Herald

by metalvsflesh (ZoicZeph)



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alternate Universe, Emotionally Repressed Dad Tries His Best, Family, I tried hard pls enjoy, Lore Rewrite, Non-Graphic Violence, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 06:09:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15527829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoicZeph/pseuds/metalvsflesh
Summary: Alternate title: Fuck You Riot Games I'm Rewriting Viktor's Backstory in Order to Realize His Dad!Viktor Potential





	The Machine Herald

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically the timeline of the Viktor I write on my roleplay blog. I chose to leave out his early life because it's identical to canon.

Viktor joined up with Stanwick’s academy in his twenties, soon finding himself taking to the most insufferable Jayce. They grew to respect one another's unique brand of genius, to the point that you could _possibly_ call them friends. They found that their inventing styles - although vastly different - meshed well together. It wasn't uncommon to find the two studying with one another, meeting up for breakfast, or sitting next to eachother in class. After earning his degree, Viktor stayed with the academy, further studying and working alongside Jayce and other Piltover inventors. He started on a project with Jayce: a diving suit hoped to aid in the cleanup of chemical waste and debris in Piltover's waters. A particularly challenging project, due to its mission to reduce the amount of casualties caused by accidents during the upkeep of the harbour, but one Viktor was confident they could accomplish.

In his mid to late thirties, a massive chem spill that devastated district after district struck Zaun, and Viktor dropped everything to return to Zaun and help. He invented Blitzcrank, after countless automations there to help malfunctioned and broke, making things much harder to manage. He built the golem out of the discarded parts scavenged from broken golems, aiming to build a more resilient, reliable machine to aid in the spill.

Not too long after it's activation, Blitzcrank began to show signs of awareness, as well as what could pass for emotions. It frequently showed cheer when good things happened, sadness when bad things happened, and distress, anxiety, or even anticipation in between. The two of them worked together to help with the spill, and the golem proved instrumental to saving scores of lives and speeding up the process of clean up.

Viktor had to postpone his project with Jayce for nearly two months in order to make time for his work with Blitzcrank. When he finally arrived back in Piltover, his time trying to save those affected by the spills had made him emotionally distant, almost haunted. Jayce pushed him to continue working on the project, even teasing him for being slow like other inventors they had worked with in the past. Viktor wanted to simply be left alone to tinker and recover from the past two months, but Jayce’s persistence forced him to the conclusion that he was letting his emotions get in the way and that it was better he push them aside and force himself to work.

Blitzcrank had followed Viktor, feeling a need to stay with him despite what one may expect. Viktor was glad for the company and let him stay around while he worked with Jayce. The two spent a lot of time playing games that one could consider childish, such as hide-and-seek, but they lent Viktor time to recover and be at ease while also working on the diving suit. Playtime would interrupt his time working on the suit, since Blitzcrank frequently asked to play while he was busy. Viktor would always oblige, or ask Jayce to play with the golem instead. Viktor further took time away from the project to make use of the resources available to him and install upgrades, replace parts, and overall better Blitzcrank’s ability to function. The sudden lack of dedication to the project, which before Viktor had spent night and day working on, upset Jayce, who considered Viktor’s pandering to Blitzcrank to be silly. It was just a robot. It shouldn't be more important than their project.

It was then that Viktor brought in his blueprints for the diving helmet, featuring a mechanism that allowed an operator to bypass the diver's inputs and control the suit until the diver was returned to the surface, while also administering a sedative to the diver in order to calm them. He hoped that this feature would cut down on the deaths caused by the frequent panic divers had when they suffered chem-induced hallucinations. Of course, the mechanism would only be used if the divers agreed to it. Regardless of this obvious fact, Jayce took this a borderline mind-control. The two broke out into a fight over the helmet. Their argument was heated, and quickly turned bitter when Viktor's temper caused it to nearly break out into a physical fight. The only thing that stopped Viktor and Jayce from tearing each other apart was a quiet interjection by Blitzcrank, who had grown scared with how tense the situation had become. The two parted ways and vowed never to work together again.

Jayce reported Viktor to the higher-ups, who took him in for reprimanding. They called upon Viktor's superior, Stanwick, to search the lab for any more blueprints of inventions 'violating basic human rights and dignity'. Stanwick quickly found the blueprints for the helmet and diving suit, as well as something else: The Great Steam Golem, Blitzcrank. Alongside all the papers, notes, blueprints, and concept sketches associated with him.

Stanwick stole the primary blueprint for Blitzcrank and presented it to the academy, in front of Viktor, claiming Blitzcrank to be his own creation. Viktor, by now mentally exhausted and having developed an exceedingly poor temper, lashed out and said Blitzcrank was his. He screamed it at the top of his lungs, so all could hear, and his words startled everyone involved:

Blitzcrank was _his_ creation, _his_ work, _his_ invention. Blitzcrank was his _son_.

And they all laughed. They said he had no basis for his claim, the blueprints were there. Signed by Stanwick. Viktor called on Jayce to help, to testify that Blitzcrank was, in fact, hiscreation. Jayce said nothing. He tried to get help from others, but they stayed silent as well out of either spite or Stanwick's bribery. They called him mad. Unstable. The press said he was obviously a psychopath who didn’t care for human life, and loved machines more than he did his fellow humans. They cast him out of the academy, stripping him of his honors. Furious, vengeful even, in burst of anger Viktor burned his entire laboratory down. All the blueprints, all the books, notes, drawings, inventions, _everything_. Even the designs for the diving suit. He burned it all and ran into the depths of Zaun, where he locked himself in his labratory, where no one could find him.

For about a year he sat in seclusion, reflecting on everything. Everything _he’d_ done, what _they’d_ done, what had happened, the consequences, the _emotions_. He reviewed them over and over, every day, and slowly grew numb to the pain, numb to everything.

Stanwick's greed, Jayce's self-centeredness, Piltover's narrow-mindedness, even his own anger. He was only trying to help, trying to prevent human error from yet again taking innocent lives. He was trying to keep his invention, whom he had grown very close to. He was trying to do  _good_. Yet, here he was.

Then, the realization hit. The best way to prevent this from happening again was to get rid of all of what caused it: emotions, prejudice, the types of weaknesses that were the root if all misdoings. And the only way to get rid of something so engrained in humanity was to evolve _past_ it. Cut it from your very being. Replace it. Upgrade yourself to become _better_.

So in secret, he operated on himself, cutting away everything that had held him to his human weaknesses and replacing it with cold, unbending steel. He refined his old discoveries, melding piece after piece of his body with ingenious machinery. In between his many operations and augmentations, he filled his time with extensive community work. He used his own augments to aid in spills, he used his knowledge to repair things that had broken, offered his services to fully automate factories and businesses, even held classes - free of charge - to teach those who wished to know how to build and tinker and read and write. Viktor became a herald for the next cultural and technological evolution, one where no one would have to fear spills, no one had to flee their homes from toxic chem clouds, and most importantly - no one had to worry about their own human weaknesses. Sure, he had long done away with his emotions, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to help others. He wasn't  _heartless_.

At least, in the moral sense.

He who had evolved to be better, to be a machine, had a responsibility to serve the lives of others, and to better them in whatever way possible. Humans had choice, yes, that was obvious. It was when they made the _wrong_ choices that things went bad. So, he had set out to find a way to get them to make the _right_ ones. Through education, and through glorious evolution, he would change Zaun for the better.

Four years in, Blitzcrank suddenly appeared on his doorstep. He wanted help. More specifically, he wanted _Viktor’s_ help. He was lost and needed someone to look after him. To give him direction. Viktor agreed, finding himself surprisingly overjoyed at the machine’s return. He hadn’t lost _all_ emotion, apparently. There was a flaw.. one he was okay with letting stay around for a while. However, Viktor soon realized something had gone wrong. The machine, who was once cheerful and outgoing, often stood idly by the door, or in the corner. He made himself small when he heard Viktor call his name, and didn’t dare respond with anything other than a quiet ‘Yes sir?’. A familiar fury ignited inside him as his mind raced to figure out,  _what had they done to his son?_

The next few days saw Viktor nose-deep in any parenting or child psychology book he could find. He needed to study, and he needed to review. Not only was he plagued with four years worth of proverbial rust, but he also had no clue where Blitzcrank had matured to in the time he was gone. Blitzcrank learned far faster than any human child due to him being.. well, a robot. Was he mentally six? Sixteen? Was he about as mature as a four or five year old, or twenty? Even if he did figure out his maturity level, what should he even do? Was there still hope for him?

Whatever the case, Viktor wouldn't stop at anything until he found an answer. Save for maybe a glass of sweetmilk. And also chem spills.

Unsurprisingly, it was then that one happened to hit.

When Viktor was asked to help the hundreds of men and women who had been affected, he had to make a choice: refuse because of his responsibility to his son that no father would ever falter on, or accept because of his responsibility to Zaun no self-respecting machine would abandon. He thought long into the night - or day, it was Zaun after all - switching between either choice. It was a hard decision. The morning after, Blitzcrank approached Viktor. The golem offered their best attempt at making food to the Herald, citing a worry they had of his health and eating habits. Blitzcrank also informed Viktor he had just heard of the very spill Viktor had been debating helping with, and was leaving to go help. He asked Viktor to come with him.

The realization of his foolishness practically slapped him in the face, and as he tried to recover, Viktor agreed to go. The two of them prepared to head down to the Sumps, and Viktor respectfully declined the.. toast, was it? It looked like toast. Though, he did take the sweetmilk.

The spill itself wasn't particularly extensive, but it had still caused hundreds of innocent people to turn rabid. Psychotic. Most ran into the depths of the Sumps, never to be found, upon seeing the duo approach. After adjusting their approach, Viktor and Blitzcrank were successful in securing and sedating a precious few of the victims. Viktor took them back to his lab and tried to un-do the damage, but only managed to slow down the degenerative process by carefully opening their skulls and filtering the toxic chemicals from their bloodstreams. His current machinery was just barely up to the task. Both of them knew that if they could not find a way to improve the technology available to them, all the people they had worked so hard to help would die. Viktor started to try and find a potable energy source using a detector Blitzcrank had fixed together, scouring most of Zaun and even sneaking up into the lower sectors of Piltover in search for the things he needed. After couple a long days of searching and finding nothing that was strong enough, Viktor grew disheartened and slowly started to accept that he would be unable to save anyone. The heaviness of the realization weighed on his mind alongside the knowledge he had to also tell Blitzcrank, who was by now so invested in the project, Viktor worried that the news would break him. If there was one thing Viktor absolutely did not want to do, it was that. A vain hope tugged at him that he would be able to find what he needed if he just looked harder, for a little while longer, and he wouldn't have to do that. Despite what his logic told him, he clung to that hope. And it paid off.

While shuffling about Piltover, Viktor detected an enormous surge of hextech energy, and knew immediately it was exactly - if not more - than what he needed. The problem: it was from Jayce's lab.

The Herald swallowed his spite and marched up to the lab, inviting himself in. The source of the power had been a Shuriman crystal, of which Jayce appeared to be testing. Viktor explained his situation to his former colleague, hoping that Jayce's persistence to upheld human rights - meaning, their right to life - would be stronger than Jayce's bitterness towards himself. However, despite the obvious right thing to do, Jayce refused; and Viktor had only the choice to take it by force.

He returned to his laboratory promptly, greeted by an eager, yet distressed steam golem. Attaching the crystal to his machinery and recalibrating some of the pieces, Viktor flipped the switch and they went to work. The reverse of the effects wasn't clear at first, nor quick, but as the machines continued on the possibility of saving these people grew wider and wider, until it met utmost certainty. The father-son duo both looked to one another, overjoyed that their hard work would soon save these people's lives, but only Blitzcrank allowed himself to celebrate. Viktor made an exception at the bot's cheeriness, allowing himself only the smallest of smiles.

Their success was short-lived, however, as Jayce bursted in to the laboratory and started smashing everything in sight. Blitzcrank was almost immediately knocked to the ground by the force of Jayce's energized hammer, giving little time for the golem to react before he was damaged to the point of an emergency shut-down. Horrified at the thought he had just lost the last he had of a family, Viktor's anger erupted yet again, and he threw himself at Jayce with a fury yet unbeholden. The two fought, Viktor weaving away from every attack he could, firing back lazers from his third hand at every opening. Their battle moved dangerously close to the people Viktor was trying to save, causing a moment of hesitation in him. A poor choice, as Jayce's hammer connected with him and demolished his third arm, possibly breaking a few ribs too. Viktor crashed into a pile of discarded parts, dazed, but aware enough to try and call out to get Jayce to stop. Jayce then shattered the crystal, causing the entire laboratory to collapse, thus ending the lives of the people that would have been saved, if given a moment longer.

Miraculously, Viktor survived. Knowing that there was no use in trying to recover the bodies, he scoured the ruins of the warehouse for his son. He raised the heavy stones and sections of steel with magic, uncovering what he could to find him. Eventually he found Blitzcrank in a heap below a section of roofing. Viktor did what he could to try and reboot the golem, pushing himself past his own limits in one last desperate, panicked attempt at trying to save someone. Anyone. _Especially_ Blitzcrank.

Thankfully, he as able to save at least one life that day.

As a perfectionist ever fated to be haunted by failure, his inability to save more than one life that day had moved him to try harder and to do more for the good of Zaun and Valoran as a whole. Beyond that, one would find that the unwavering determination he gave towards his Glorious Revolution was far outmatched by what he gave for Blitzcrank, whom he swore to protect and provide for until the bitter end.

**Author's Note:**

> I worked a while on this, but I might edit it from time to time to correct spelling/grammar errors since I did write all this on a Kindle and I'm dumb. I hope you enjoyed it anyways, thank you for reading!


End file.
